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Music Rarity: One Woman Wielding a Baton

When Simone Young stepped onto the podium at the Berlin Staatsoper in 1992, there was hardly any applause at first. This Australian conductor was making her debut with the company in Puccini's "Boheme." She was making history as well, being the first woman ever to conduct there. But to many audience members, this diminutive woman in a black silk suit with her waist-length red hair pulled back in a ponytail must have looked like a violinist or flutist arriving late.

"I guess I didn't look like a conductor," Ms. Young said recently. "Of course, I don't know what people expect a woman to look like."

But there was plenty of applause after the performance, which critics hailed. On Wednesday Ms. Young is to make her Metropolitan Opera debut, which is also her American debut, conducting "La Boheme," only the second woman to conduct with the company. The first, 20 years ago, was Sarah Caldwell. And the invitation to Ms. Caldwell came only after Beverly Sills, engaged to sing Violetta in "La Traviata," campaigned on her behalf.

"The barriers have mostly broken down for women composers, stage directors and designers," Ms. Sills said recently. "Conducting is the last barrier."

Ms. Young would prefer to be judged solely for her musical skills and accomplishments. At 35, she has established affiliations with most of the major opera houses of Europe and is booked through 1999. She has returned to Berlin in recent seasons to conduct such challenging works as Wagner's "Tristan und Isolde" and "Die Meistersinger" and Janacek's "Jenufa." And she has broken the sex barrier at other bulwarks of the status quo, becoming the first woman to conduct at the Vienna Staatsoper, the Bayerische Staatsoper in Munich and the Bastille Opera in Paris.

Her working repertory is over 60 scores; she speaks Italian, German and French fluently, along with passable Russian. Even the crusty, all-male Vienna Philharmonic has taken to her balletic conducting style and alert musical intelligence. But she knows she cannot escape the trailblazer role that has been thrust upon her, and she takes the responsibility seriously.

"I was very much aware of the fact that if I failed I would make it that much harder for other young women," she said after a rehearsal at the Met the other day. "Somehow, if a man gets in front of an orchestra and does a bad job, people say, 'Well, we won't have him back again.' But if a woman fails, they say, 'See what happens when you have a woman conductor.' But I think this is changing."

Perhaps. But not very quickly.

Such female conductors as Marin Alsop and Gisele Ben-Dor have made inroads on the concert stage. And regional opera companies have been better at providing opportunities for women. At the New York City Opera -- even before Ms. Sills took over as general director -- women have conducted with some frequency: Ms. Caldwell, Judith Somogi, Eve Queler, Karen Keltner and Laurie Ann Hunter.

But among the top European opera companies, the only place Ms. Young did not break the barrier was Covent Garden. Her colleagues Jane Glover and Sian Edwards had preceded her.

The problem has been the old Catch-22, Ms. Sills noted. "There have been few opportunities for women without extensive experience," she said. "But how can women acquire the experience if they don't get hired?"

As Ms. Young puts it: "Part of the problem is the lack of role models for young women. But it may have more to do with the audience's perception of what a conductor does. When people talk about conducting -- the maestro myth -- they talk about power. Conducting has nothing to do with power. It has everything to do with forgetting your personal self, immersing yourself in this music, making the music speak to the audience and doing that together with the forces you are working with. But what the public sees is somebody waving their arms around and everybody following. And traditionally, power figures have been male."

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Ms. Young's role models as a child in Sydney were, of course, only men, particularly Leonard Bernstein, whom she observed in rehearsal when she was 12. Her parents -- her Irish father, a lawyer with a "passion for literature," and her Croatian mother, a dressmaker -- sent her to a school for girls where there was never a question of there being things that only boys could do. "When we put on plays, we built the sets, moved the chairs, directed ourselves," she said.

She studied piano, flute, guitar and, at the conservatory in Sydney, composition. Her first conducting experiences were with new-music ensembles. She was drawn into vocal coaching, and obtained a job on the music staff at the Australian Opera when she was just 22. Three years later, the conductor for a production of "The Mikado" took ill, and Ms. Young substituted at the last minute. This settled her on a career path.

"I never actually took conducting lessons," she said. "But I spent a wonderful 12 months in Europe observing conductors in rehearsal. Technique is an interesting issue in conducting. It's all about intention and conception. When something is not together, it is seldom because the musicians are not playing it together: it's because I am not hearing it together, I am not creating the right kind of sound in my ear."

James Levine met Ms. Young when she was working as an assistant to Daniel Barenboim at Bayreuth. Impressed with her work, he invited her to the Met. And her debut is not a one-shot gesture at political correctness. Ms. Young has been engaged through 1998. She is to conduct a "Cavalleria Rusticana" and "Pagliacci" double bill in 1997, and "Il Trovatore," "Les Contes des Hoffmann" and "La Traviata" over the following two seasons.

Roberto Alagna, the hot young tenor who is making his debut on Wednesday night as Rodolfo with his fiancee, Angela Gheorghiu, as Mimi, has been attracting most of the advance attention. But Ms. Young almost welcomes a break from the "first-woman fuss" that has followed her. She has worked with both singers before. "We're a played-in team," she said. All three are to be together for a Covent Garden "Traviata" later this season.

For a conductor who has tackled such sprawling works as "Siegfried" and "Die Frau Ohne Schatten," Ms. Young cites Puccini's most popular operas -- "La Boheme," "Tosca" and "Madama Butterfly" -- as "without a doubt the three most difficult scores I've ever done."

The challenge, she said, comes from the rubato that is essential to the style. "To get that kind of flexibility and yet maintain the cohesion and the long phrases, that's the trick," she said. "In 'Boheme,' there are eight different words to describe how to slow down."

Home for Ms. Young is the bucolic countryside of Sussex, 40 miles south of London, where she lives with her husband, Greg Condon, a teacher of languages in grade school, and their 8-year-old daughter, Yvann.

One thing is certain. Ms. Young, who stands 5 feet 4 inches tall, will be the first person to mount the conductor's podium at the Metropolitan Opera in high heels. "At first I wore high heels to compensate," she said. "Now they are a habit. They give me some stature, I suppose. But male conductors come in all sizes and shapes. In a way, I am just another one."